365//365: Day 220 – Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (GB)

Super Mario Land proved that you can throw the moniker of “Super Mario” into a game, make it play somewhat like the Commodore 64 port, chop out half the games length and still sell millions of copies, based off the name alone. Granted Super Mario Land is still an engaging enough title, it didn’t feel much like the NES incarnations. Understandably so, as the power of the Game Boy handheld unit wasn’t necessarily very impressive, even for its time. As time passed, Nintendo released a sequel titled Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. In many ways, this was Mario’s true first appearance on the Nintendo Game Boy, but in some ways, the formula of Super Mario Bros. has been changed from a side scroller title, to a side stroller.

There are a plethora of stages and worlds you'll encounter throughout Super Mario Land, none of which move faster than a snails pace!

Super Mario Land was able to convey screen scrolling in a manner that replicated the NES Mario titles with a commendable success. This was due in part to the simplistic nature of the visuals, which also hurt the overall feeling that you were indeed playing a Mario title. With SML2, character models closely resembled what they should, adding an immense amount of on screen detail. Unfortunately, with the amount of detail, it seems as if the correlation between Mario’s run speed and the speed of the screen scrolling took a massive nose dive.

The speeds of which you progress through each stage are significantly dumb down. You’ll watch Mario’s feet running a mile a minute, but the screen scrolls at such a dishearteningly slow pace. It’s not just running speeds that are hampered, but your jumping is as well. Pinpoint precision and swift jumping speeds are replaced by a somewhat loosened precision, with a general floaty feel to it. It’s almost a permanent moon jump, which does get aggravating. Enemies move at a snails pace as well, which actually can raise the difficulty some, as the timing of stomps might be thrown off by the koopa troopas moving as slow as a….turtle.

As mentioned earlier, the graphics received a massive overhaul from its indistinguishable prequel, offering legitimate character models both new and old, and much more populated, though still simplistic backgrounds. Each power up you receive will have enough of a visual difference to tell them apart; Fire Mario will now have a feather on the front of his cap (which makes no sense), Carrot Mario (the token floating down/higher jump-like power up) give you rabbit ears) and Star Mario flashes your avatar.

There are some stages that go out their ways to slow down the pace even further.

When thinking about the Mario franchise, engaging and fitting music, as well as the iconic sound effects are aspects you think about immediately. After a few minutes of SML2, you’ll wonder what happened to those notions. The soundtrack across the board is appropriately whimsical, however they are ill-fitted for a Super Mario Bros. title. These are songs you’d most likely hear in a Kirby’s Adventure title. They are not necessarily under-performing tracks, but they just don’t mesh well with the “action” on screen. The rest of the audio performance mixes series staples (collecting coins) with some unusual changes (going down pipes). It’s not a significant deterrence, but disappointing in some aspects.

With all of these negative strikes against SML2, it seems like it all blends together in such a way that the overall game is just not as captivating as any handheld Mario title after it. Being a side stroller really changes the pace and flow of the gameplay in such a way, that even if the resemblance to the Super Mario Bros. franchise is apparent, you’ll walk away feeling as if you’ve been playing a Mario game that was developed by THQ or Jaleco, but not Nintendo.

Granted the overall package is definitely not a total loss, or even a major loss at that, Super Mario Bros. 2: 6 Golden Coins just doesn’t feel like a traditional Mario title. While the look is impressive in its own right, the pace, speed of gameplay, fun factor and musical composition just doesn’t click well as a package. If you’re a die hard Mario fan, you’ll either have this already, or well on your way to hunting this one down. If you’re in the latter bracket, don’t be surprised if the game you track down, is one that is nothing like you envisioned it.

Wario's first appearance, and boy did he look idiotic.

Rating: 5.9